The study, by sociologists Cristobal Young at Stanford and Charles Varner at Princeton, studied the migration patterns of New Jersey’s millionaires before and after 2004, when the state imposed a “millionaire’s tax” that raised rates on those earning $500,000 or more to 8.97% from 6.37%.

The study found that the overall population of millionaires increased during the tax period. Some millionaires moved out, of course. But they were more than offset by the creation of new millionaires.

The study dug deeper to figure out whether the millionaires who were moving out did so because of the tax. As a control group, they used New Jersey residents who earned $200,000 to $500,000–in other words, high-earners who weren’t subject to the tax. They found that the rate of out-migration among millionaires was in line with and rate of out-migration of submillionaires. The tax rate, they concluded, had no measurable impact.

In other words, once you’re rich as hell, taxes just aren’t that big a deal. If you live in a half-million house, one would imagine you’re not so completely in hock that a $34 annual increase in your taxes so that schoolchildren in your town can have textbooks that don’t refer to the USSR won’t ruin you. If you have a yacht somewhere, you can probably take a $15 hit to provide clean water to those of us who don’t sail to the Virgin Islands every autumn.

Yet every tiny increase in dollar amounts is treated like you, personally, you one homeowner over there, are expected to fork over the entire $6 million for the school district your own self by eating ramen for the rest of your life. The anti-tax stories that appear around mid-April would have us believe that we’re all in such a precarious economic state that a few more bucks is going to kill us all.

I had a boss who used to have a theory about why news reporters always covered weather stories. I mean, in January in Chicago, it is EXPECTED TO SNOW, so why treat every mild snowstorm as if it was the second coming of Christ? Why is every summer thunderstorm breathlessly narrated by some ponce standing out on an overpass? My boss’s theory was that the weather is something everyone, no matter location or economic stratum or occupation, can talk about as equals. It’s universally accessible and therefore perfect for a lazy news director who needs something to bring in responses to an online poll or fill a hole on the front page.

I’m starting to think bitching about taxes is the same sort of thing. Everybody pays them, so everybody is vulnerable to the argument that they suck. “Fuck taxes” isn’t exactly a controversial statement. That people don’t actually live in a constant state of uproar over them, and aren’t about to yank their kids out of school and head to Wyoming just because the political winds blow in a different direction once in a while, is not something that feeds into the laziest possible narrative.

While you are absolutely correct that most of the wealthy are unlikely to move if states or the nation substantially raise their taxes (particularly if we raise the in line with the other OECD countries). On the other hand, millionaires and more particularly billionaires are as a whole a corrupt and greedy bunch of bastards (which is how they got rich in the first place) who will fight tooth and nail to avoid ever paying any taxes.

the rich also spend a lot of ads convincing poor dipshits in the south and other conservative areas (aka racists) that one day they might win the lottery or something and be rich themselves. so the poor people don’t want to tax the rich now in the rarer-than-lightningstrike chance they might be subjected to the same taxes eventually

Actually what they convince those folks of is that the government is taking their (the working class’s) money to give it to shiftless, lazy, irresponsible, and unworthy people of color. That way the working class joins the fight against taxes.

Looking at charts of the increasing concentration of wealth over the last 30 years is really pretty depressing. Right now our GINI Coefficient is worse than Ivory Coast and Cameroon. Not exactly the neighborhood I care to live in.

While I think it’s a bit much to characterize cannabis intake as “under the influence” unless you are doing special “breathalyser” type analyses that can measure on a functional impairment scale that correlates with alcohol, I found this of interest with respect hypocritical politicians:

A high-ranking Rhode Island lawmaker who criticized the Legislature by invoking the image of pot-smoking immigrants is facing drug charges in Connecticut.

Police in East Haven, Conn., say East Greenwich Republican Robert Watson, the House Minority Leader, was stopped at a police checkpoint Friday and charged with possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia and driving under the influence.

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy defines the Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as ‘a bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.’”

I got to thinking today and I think I can describe what’s been bothering me most recently about this blog. It’s the ideological bullies that have been so thick lately. From the left or the right, this place crawls with people who have decided that if you don’t agree with everything they say, you must be either mentally deficient or a gleeful and willing participant in selling the citizens of this country into serfdom or both. They are as bad as or worse than the truthers or the birthers. I’m either supposed to preface each and every comment with a statement about how very much I loath Obama or end it with how absolutely righteous and correct everything that, (insert pseudonym here), says is. Of course this has been true with every blog I have ever participated in and I suppose it’s just the drawbacks of having an open forum but together with my own obsessive fretting about my situation, I really don’t need people coming along insisting on reminding me how much thing suck and accusing me of being partially responsible for it. This isn’t a rant at late night as most of those bullies don’t hang out here but rather to the people I respect at late night. Just an explanation of why I haven’t felt much like participating recently further from last night. I couldn’t comment on swim this morning without it being suggested by one of them that “even I” must be able to figure out, (insert whatever it was here), totally out of the blue. I don’t even remember what it was about but I know I wasn’t even addressing that person at the time. Maybe I should write a diary…

One of the things that has been happening is that the rich have become divided as well. The numbers of millionaires has grown substantially, but there has also emerged a new group of super wealthy billionaires whose wealth dwarfs that of the millionaires. In the meantime, the income of working Americans has declined. There is a causal relationship there.

Thanks Allison!
Good one!
Also, NPR’s Planet Money did a whole podcast on this last Friday: more sources, more studies, makes more conclusive.
So why do our ‘leaders’ even ‘debate’ this if the facts seem so clear?

Time for me to toddle off. I have a MA thesis defense at 8:00 am. The onslaught begins! (I have 4 MA thesis defenses, a Ph.D. dissertation defense, two dissertation proposal defenses, and an MA proposal defense in the next three weeks. Not to mention the normal 80 term papers and 80 essay exams to grade.) Take care all.

…a new group of super wealthy billionaires whose wealth dwarfs that of the millionaires.

Right, talk about your super-sized phallic measurement apparatus.

The numbers of millionaires has grown substantially…

But that was kind of my point – and I say/ask this because in a sociological sense, I’m trying to challenge my own conventions – is the actual number at all meaningful?

Rather than go into medicine, or law, or social work, or gawd-forbid teaching, for a good while now, career-seekers have swerved toward financial services. If that is a past trend owing to the economy, shouldn’t the number start declining pretty soon?

The number is meaningful in a sense as it increases the amount of wealth they suck out of the system. What is most important, however, is how much wealth is concentrated in the upper 5-10% (especially the upper 1%) since it is essentially sucked out of the economy and not available to generate jobs or income for the rest of us.

Outside of trolls (that do seem to proliferate all over), my guess is along the lines of of what mzchief said @32. This is a welcoming and wonderful jumping off place for folks who’ve been harboring, nurturing their own ideas about what’s going on, how they feel about it. Where, at last they can say what they want and – even more bracing – get feedback for it..
And people get spun up in their own head, so to get flak for speaking out on what perhaps was thought previously as ‘my own secret thoughts’, people too often see it as a personal attack and can get all high and mighty.
Also relative to this observation is with more people on the internet, everybody has an opinion, so we can expect to see more and more who don’t have a fact to back up their tirade but with their newness to the venue, will NOT back down, though if they had sense or experience in the venue, might listen more before they leap.
Make some sense?

I’m sure that’s part of it but it’s not a misunderstanding when somebody accuses you of being slow because you don’t agree with his or her point or when somebody assumes they can can determine what you think or what future action you may take based on a single comment made to somebody else. I try to give everybody the benefit of the doubt and when I wrongly judge somebody I make a point to issue a mea culpa and an apology but the people I’m talking about and I aren’t suffering from misunderstanding due to the limited nature of text communication. It’s just being aggressive and bellicose in order to sound impressive and to bully people into agreeing with them. No other opinions allowed!

Agreed! I see that a lot. Not so much here, but I don’t spend my days here, usually just come out at night. I do see a lot of projection and belittling elsewhere and by people that don’t have a leg to stand on. As for trolls, ignoring can work, but EVERYONE has to do that and there will always be someone who comes along who doesn’t see the game for what it is and goes and steps in it. Personally I’ve spent way too much time trying to coax trolls elsewhere out into the open and try to show how to play nice. All to very little or limited success, if any.

Personal attacks are not OK. No real debate is won by them and the one that resorts to such has just disgraced him/herself in front of quite the audience. I have to say that I have seen folks that seem like “attitudinal” trolls (from what I can tell they aren’t paid to troll but they aren’t exactly Progress’ friend).

No but I’m not sure these are even “trolls” in the traditional sense. Trolls are about attention and there is a certain amount of that too but these ones seem to be folks with an ax to grind and don’t want conversation but adherence to their points of view.

This is a really important story Allison.
A central tenet to the wingnut dystopia is the fetishism on taxes.
To bust it,
- by demystifying the central notion that lower taxes equals the good, or some such, –
would go a long way I think toward expanding the vulnerabilities that the capitalist dragon seems to sit on.
Showing that higher taxes do not make the uber-wealthy move out of state any more than some other variable, like the weather, something nobody can do anything about,
should be added to other things

Perhaps in explaining how the USE of taxes could fund the FEC et al to regulate… you name it, perhaps a case could be made toward constructing a larger argument against the currently popular dystopia project in the Beltway with just such a central idea as
“higher taxes don’t actually make the wealthy in a state to flee…”

Alison, your aim is true.
The rich will not leave because of taxes, up to a limit.
Even the Rolling Stones might not have emmigrated to the south of France in a 90% tax climate had not Scotland Yard been determined to take their liberty as well. And we’re not talking 90% here.
All that said, the one thing missing from this analysis and Planet Money’s is the amount the truly wealthy are weilling to spend to influence public policy. On a simple cost benefit basis, if I am the (insert Walton/Kock/less polarizing but nearly as wealthy) family I will spend $100 million to save $500 million every opportunity, and consider it a bargain. Small wonder you hear so much about the “death tax”. Similarly, all I have to do is drop a hint along with my $2,000 check and politicians all over the US will wet their pants about losing my tax revenue.
The defecit has two huge components (as it has for the past 40 years):
Defense and shrinking revenue percentages. Prior to the Republican Revolution it was primarily Defense.
At least back then the wealthy contributed blood (via the draft)while denying the treasure for their adventures. Now they contribute neither.